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Second-tier social networks feel the pain too

When the mainstream media and bloggers start to question if Facebook, Silicon Valley’s most loved social network, is on the decline, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that second-tier social networks are visibly hurting too.

After all, if first-tier social networks are struggling with falls in traffic, decreasing user engagement and most importantly, undermonetisation, it’s only logical that second-tier social networks would be faring even worse.

And that does seem to increasingly be the case for many of them.

Problems for Piczo

News.com has an article detailing the woes of Piczo, a second-tier social network that has raised $18m in funding.

The three year-old startup, which has been most popular with teenage girls, has seen its traffic decline considerably.

At one point in 2006 the service was reportedly adding 35,000 new registered users each day, but as reported by The Times, traffic to Piczo in the UK, one of its most important markets, has decreased by 56%.

From positivementions on TechCrunch to some random blogger’s comment that “teens control billions of dollars of spending worldwide and that understanding this demographic and knowing how to market to them online is a skill that Piczo can bring to its partners and advertisers,” Piczo was clearly seen by many as a promising startup.

Featured in the Wall Street Journal on October 2, 2006, it had a great story - viral growth was apparently sparked with an email to 100 users of a defunct service started by Piczo’s founder.

But fortunes can change quite quickly and the promise of this second-tier social network was replaced with layoffs and an employee exodus that is eerily reminiscent of Bubble 1.0

It would be neglectful to not point out that the problems caused by Piczo’s decreasing popularity are exacerbated by the fact that the site, like most other social networks, has not been able to generate revenues in line with expectations.

Piczo’s former director of operations, Parker Ranney, himself admitted that there’s “an issue of monetization.” I, of course, like other pundits, saw this coming.

"Like many other social-networking sites, Piczo relies on advertisements on the site for revenue, but Mr. Verba says the company hopes to branch into other areas like selling music, ringtones, and even Piczo-branded merchandise. The company is currently unprofitable, but Mr. Verba hopes to be profitable by the end of 2007."

Clearly that hasn’t happened, demonstrating just how difficult it can be for even popular social networks to turn business plans into reality.

Just as I have predicted that many of the funded online video startups would start to feel pain in 2008, Piczo serves as a warning that many funded social networks face the same fate.

Like Piczo, Faces.com had received glowing reviews. TechCrunch went so far as to state that “Faces.com stands apart in social networking” (and note the “post slug” of “facescom-could-shake-up-social-networking” as well).

Yet it appears that all the positive reviews from the most “influential” Web 2.0 blogs still couldn’t create a successful outcome for Faces.com either.

Like Piczo, Faces.com had a business model sketched out:

"What’s most interesting about Faces, beyond its feature set, is the business model. It’s big on multimedia sharing and users are encouraged to upload a lot of pictures and music. Users seeking to exceed the monthly limits on upload (500 MB) and bandwidth (10 GB) can purchase a pro account for $25 per year.

"And then there are no limits to how much media you can put in your account or your visitors can play from your profile page. There will be advertising placed on profile pages and by audio in between every 4 songs played on free account user pages. The company says it will split graphic ad revenue with pro users and remove audio ads from their playlists."

If Faces.com has indeed shut its doors, it’s yet another example that turning a social network into a viable business is clearly a tall order.

At this point, there’s no reason to think that their fate will be any different from that of Piczo and Faces.com. Unless, of course, they decide to cash in the chips and find a party willing to provide an exit.

Unfortunately, when you take VC money at a valuation that isn’t close to being in line with what your company is really worth, cashing in the chips sometimes isn’t an option.

The truth is that the generic, mass-market social network is a commodity and has been for some time. This doesn’t bode well for once-popular second-tier social networks that simply expected their luck to continue perpetually.

At the end of the day, one thing is becoming clear. Bubbles may come in different shapes and sizes, but the result is always the same: they pop.

Comments (5)

Available in 15+ languages (with more introduced every month), hi5 remains a top ten website globally and a successful international social network. In fact, we are the #1 or #2 most-trafficked website in nearly a dozen countries, and the #1 social network in: Peru, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Portugal, Thailand, Romania, Macedonia, Cyprus, Greece, Mauritus and several other nations around the world. We were profitable within our first year of operation, and continue to expand our media partnerships, while focusing on rolling out new features to support the diverse interests of our global user base. There are now 80 million individuals in over 200 nations registered for our service, and we will make ongoing improvements to keep the community momentum strong.

I think the growth will be in the use of smaller, more focused, niche social networks that cater to a particular interest, hobby or vocation. These smaller sites will allow like-minded individuals and groups to connect, exchange ideas and receive genuine and useful support.

These kinds of sites will also be attractive to advertisers as they get targeted demographics to spend their online advertising budgets on.

Thanks to sites such as ning, anyone can start a niche social network about anything. There's also a search engine to help find niche networks, http://findasocialnetwork.com

over 9 years ago

Pauline

Piczo has made a lot of terrible boo boo's over the last year and many Piczo users have left because of it.

The really need to buck up their ideas and get back on track.

Listen to your members Piczo if you want to keep going.

over 9 years ago

Jennifer

Well I can't say I'm surprised about Piczo's downfall. Since Christmas they have added so many different features that have done nothing but cause problems for peoples Piczo sites, some are unuseable.

I used to have a Piczo site but deleted it in the end because I couldn't stand all the problems. Things would just disappear or not work!

Piczo never listen to feedback and are very patronising. They seem to forget that they have members older than 16 and should listen to their users for a change!

I think it is very sad that they rely on Advertising so much though they do remove some of the ads for the more established members. The ads have to be the most annoying thing and many Piczo sites upload all sorts of corrupt codes without realising it and end up with viruses or more pop ups.

If Piczo can't be bothered to listen to it's members more carefully many more will leave.

about 9 years ago

Cordell

Because of the economic crisis that our country is facing some companies decided to have massive layoff of employee. This is really a bad news as the unemployment rate increased and more people today are struggling hard to meet their ends. A home business sounds like a great idea for a lot of people. Home business is how people used to make their living centuries ago – not many people used to work solely at an office – and these days, after suffering a layoff, it may seem like the way to go. You may even be able to start your business with a payday loan or an installment loan. No boss to worry about. You can dictate hours, and even better, dress code. If your interaction with customers takes place by phone or e-mail, customers won’t be able to tell that you aren’t wearing pants. Not to mention the incentives – in a normal job, if you increase profits, you don’t get any benefits from it. However, if you start a home business, you will.

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